


On the Edge of Collapse

by alexcat



Category: Jurassic Park (Movies), Jurassic Park - All Media Types, Jurassic World (2015)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 05:18:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5444669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexcat/pseuds/alexcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something is going on at Isla Nublar,  and Alan and Ian mean to find out what.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Edge of Collapse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tarlan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/gifts).



> _“Living systems are never in equilibrium. They are inherently unstable. They may seem stable, but they’re not. Everything is moving and changing. In a sense, everything is on the edge of collapse”_ (Jurassic Park, p. 246).  
>  John Arnold, arguing that instability is a sign of a healthy system.

_Sometime in 2002, Wyoming_

Alan Grant looked at the email again. 

_I heard you went to the Isla Sorna site. Want to talk about it? Meet me for a drink?_

It came from chaosisall@chaos.com and was signed M. 

Malcolm? 

Why on earth would Ian Malcolm want to talk to him? They had not spoken since 1993. How had he heard of the trip to Isla Sorna? 

He hit the reply button and meant to say a simple ‘No’ but typed ‘Yes, maybe, yes. Call 555-555-3466.’ He looked at it a moment, hesitated then hit send. 

His phone rang as soon as he sent the email. 

“Malcolm?” Grant answered. 

“Hello, Dr. Grant. How are you?” 

Alan looked at his phone. Was he serious?

“I’m …underfunded. How are you?”

Malcolm laughed. “More of the same here. Where are you, by the way?”

“Wyoming. Um, Gillette? I’m heading to a site tomorrow and am here waiting for my assistant and some more equipment to arrive. They insist on computers these days. I remember when all we needed were shovels and such.”

“You, my friend, are a dinosaur, just like the ones you dig up.” Malcolm’s laugh was hearty and not at all unfriendly. 

Alan laughed along with Malcolm. “I am that indeed. Where might you be?” 

“I’m in Los Angeles, actually. I thought I might come to where you are, buy you a drink.”

“Fly all the way out here for a drink? That’s a long way. Los Angeles sell out of liquor?” 

“Tell me where, when? I should be there tomorrow afternoon.”

“Cowpokes Bar and Grill? I’ll be at the bar.” 

“When?”

“Anytime.”

*

Alan had spent much of the afternoon drinking, but he was sober enough that he had only a slight buzz when Ian Malcolm came through the doors dressed in all black and walking with a black cane. He didn’t look much different than he had nine years ago, maybe a little grayer and a few more wrinkles. 

Malcolm nodded and headed toward Dr. Grant. He sat down on a stool and motioned the bartender over. 

“Give him another drink and pour me one of whatever he’s drinking.” He threw some bills on the bar. “And keep ‘em coming.”

Alan was curious. What the hell did Ian want?

Ian, as if he’d read his mind, turned to Alan and said, “Why am I here, you ask?”

“You might say that.”

“So what did you see at Isla Sorna?”

“Why would I have been there?”

“Some crazy couple hired you to help find their son.”

“Not saying it happened but I might have seen dinosaurs, John Hammond’s dinosaurs. Again.”

“Remember Henry Wu?”

“Yes, I do. How could I not? He turned out to be Hammond’s Dr. Frankenstein.”

Ian laughed. “You _do_ have a sense of humor!”

“Not so much about Hammond and his monsters.”

“That we can agree on. Have you ever heard of Simon Masrani?’ 

“Masrani Oil? Hasn’t everyone?” 

“Did you know that he owns InGen now?”

Grant felt a shiver run down his spine. “And?” He felt dread already. 

“Word has it that he plans to build a new park.”

“Where?”

“Right beside the old one on Isla Nublar, I’m guessing.”

“Where do you hear such things?”

“I have sources.”

“That’s as bad an idea as the first one.”

“Worse even. I have heard that Henry Wu still works for InGen.”

Alan felt his face burn with anger. Henry Wu’s arrogance and ignorance were responsible for the velociraptors being able to mate. He’d used frog DNA, seemingly unaware that some amphibians had the ability to changes sexes in order to reproduce themselves. 

“Does Masrani know about Wu’s snafu?”

“I would assume so. Simon Masrani loves to micromanage everything. I’ll never understand why people think that’s a good thing. All you end up with is someone who knows nothing making decisions that would even be difficult for trained scientists to make.”

Grant sat back and took a long swallow of his whiskey, then leaned forward and asked Ian a question. “Wasn’t there just a little bit of a thrill when we rode through Jurassic Park and you saw them for the first time, though?” 

“Honestly? Yes. But I realized very quickly how little we were and how big they were.” He rubbed his leg almost unconsciously. Alan noticed and said nothing about it. 

“Nothing in life has excited me like the first glimpse of that Brachiosaurus standing on her hind legs.”

Malcolm laughed. “You are a strange one, Dr. Grant.”

Grant shrugged. “Why did you come to tell me?”

Ian stared at his glass for along moment. “You and I are the only people in the world who know exactly what happened there. We know how stupid John Hammond was to think he could do this without consequence. Maybe we should try to stop Masrani before he makes all the same mistakes.”

“You think he’ll listen to us?” 

“Probably not. Did you know that InGen killed three Pteranadons somewhere over Canada after your visit to Isla Sorna last year?”

Grant raised an eyebrow. “I hadn’t heard it but I’m not surprised. I’m surprised that the dinosaurs haven’t spread farther than we know.”

“I am pretty sure they probably have. There are too many odd reports from all over about strange new beasts, new monsters.”

“Some have no way of traveling far from Isla Sorna.” He was thinking of the herbivores. The raptors were intelligent enough that nothing they did would surprise him. 

“I am not sure that Henry Wu has ever stopped creating dinosaurs for InGen.”

“Where do we go to find out?” 

“Let’s see if we can get to Isla Nublar again.”

Alan drained his glass and made to stand up. “That’s one place I had hoped to _never_ see again.”

*

Ian Malcolm had as many dark and dangerous connections as he did legitimate ones, and through one of those dark ones, he found a way to go to the island. Alan Grant still had no idea what Malcolm planned on doing. He went along anyway. 

They flew to Costa Rica on a commercial plane then the fun started. They met a man in a dank, nasty bar who assured them he could get them to the island but he said he would not set foot on it himself. They’d have to take a small motorboat from his bigger one. 

Ian asked him, “Why won’t you set foot on the island?”

The man spat as if he’d tasted something horrid. “Demons! It has demons!”

“Tell me about them,” Alan pressed.

“They are evil and eat people!” 

“Have you seen them?” Ian asked. 

The man shook his head. “My cousin, he work for crazy white man, Hammond. He tell stories of demons.”

“But are they still there?” Alan leaned closer to the man. 

“Si. He say he go back for big money and see them. They eat each other.”

They agreed to pay the man to take them as close as he dared. 

*

They didn’t have long to look around and get out. 

Their journey began several hours before daylight when they boarded the decrepit fishing boat that ferried them to a cove where they were set aboard a small boat with an outboard engine that sounded as if it might die any minute. They went ashore on Isla Nublar and began to explore. They both knew from past experience that the island was bigger than it seemed. 

They found the old hotel, overgrown with vines and falling into ruin. They went inside. There were still rows of tiny plastic dinosaur toys lining the shelves of a store that never opened. Faded flyers littered the floor. They searched all over and found that the generators still worked. 

Both wondered who had been here to keep them working but neither said a word about it. They also found one of the jeeps still plugged in. Miraculously (or maybe not), it ran so they drove slowly over the island, using what was left of the paths and service roads from the Jurassic Park days. 

The jungle was lush and had covered many of the manmade structures with vines and leaves. 

One thing they didn’t see was dinosaurs.

They stopped late in the day to eat and talk.

“I was assured that the island was empty and everything destroyed,” Ian finally said as he tore open an energy bar. 

“That’s not true, though. Someone _has_ clearly been here, to the main building anyway. I didn’t see any droppings or anything that would suggest dinosaurs, though. Perhaps the whole story is just legend.”

“Or maybe not. Maybe someone has been here and to discourage any unwanted visitors, maybe they encouraged the rumors.” Ian looked more like his old self in that moment than he had since he came to Jurassic Park in 1993. 

“You think Masrani really does intend to rebuild the park?” Alan asked, unsure of what to think.

“I do and I think he means to build it right here. I’d bet those people who have been here are engineers, planning and studying how best to go at it this time.”

“What can we do?”

Ian laughed. “Not a damned thing, I expect.”

They rode around more of the island, stopping in the middle of the road when they both spotted them. 

Jeep tracks. 

Fresh ones in the new mud. 

The weather report they’d checked before they came had said there was rain yesterday. 

They weren’t alone! 

“We need to get out of here!” Ian said, as he turned the electric jeep around.

“Don’t you want to know what they’re up to?” Alan asked. 

They jungle grew quiet suddenly. The air was split with a sound that neither of them had ever forgotten, nor ever would. 

The roar of a tyrannosaurus rex. 

“I know what they’re up to now. Let’s get the hell on that boat and off this island!” 

They headed straight to the cove, not bothering to return the jeep to the shed where they’d found it. They got into their tiny motorboat and the last sound they heard as they fired up the little motor was an answer to the dinosaur’s roar: a pack of raptors squawked and called not too far away. 

Neither man spoke until they were safe in Costa Rica. 

Back in Wyoming, Alan Grant couldn’t help but shiver a little when his team dug up a long claw that had once belonged to a prehistoric velociraptor. 

~the end~

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this was what you wanted. I am an old fan but a new dabbler in writing this fndom. I really enjoyed it.


End file.
